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johnnyFive  ·  2879 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: January 11, 2016

    Ultimately, though, it feels like Huxley is presenting a false dilemma between hardcore moralism and hardcore hedonism(?), which was somewhat disappointing.

I really never got this impression. I'm much more convinced by this interpretation, basically that Huxley was worried about how bad a seeming-utopia would really be.

If you haven't read it, I cannot recommend Brave New World Revisited enough. Written in the late '50s, it's a non-fiction work where Huxley examines the primary themes of Brave New World and examines the degree to which they've been borne out by societal changes since 1931 (when he wrote the first one), and discusses "the subject of freedom and its enemies." It's nothing short of brilliant, and thankfully is online.